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My name's Tom. I'm a 26 year old developer from Clacton-On-Sea in Essex. Currently I work as Senior Mobile Developer at OpenAdvice, a financxial technology startup making great financial planning accessible to all. I'm also a content creator, a musician, husband, father and ITFC supporter.
This website has been created using Obsidian, because I didn't have a website nor the time to make a proper one. It feels sort of like documentation, and I like the idea of that. This is the documentation associated with me, Tom. This is the Tom documentation.
I'll post and expand on projects and blogs and other things here.
Projects
I've done a few write-ups for some projects of mine:
FreshPlay - An app-development agency I founded after leaving university
Inhabit - The "worlds first" social habit tracking app
BrawlQuest - A 2d MMORPG created in Go & Lua
While working at FreshPlay I completed over a hundred individual projects, the reviews for which can be found on my Fiverr profile. I still occasionally take on freelance work if there's a fancy synthesiser I want ;) Currently got my eyes on a Roland VR-09b for my band's third album.
One of the projects I worked on in 2019 was featured as Apple's App of the Day. Float - Get Essays Done.
Languages
I've spent 6 years using Flutter/Dart to create beautiful mobile apps, using it when it was close to brand new and barely stable. It's been amazing watching it grow into the de facto cross-platform framework and I'm proud to be as close to an expert in it as one can get.
My many years of freelance work building apps to tight deadlines and budget constraints has made me more than familiar with Firebase & NoSQL, Supabase & PostgreSQL and using JavaScript or TypeScript to create cloud functions to keep server-less apps ticking.
I've built several websites using React and CSS, opting for the Gatsby framework.
I've built little projects and games in PHP, although I am by no means an expert.
I started using Lua when I was 13 years old to create small games using the Love2D framework. In 2021 I released BrawlQuest, a 2d MMORPG built using Lua with server written entirely in Go. I've more recently used the Godot engine and built in scripting language GDScript to fiddle about with game ideas.
I love developing apps and websites, but game development is my true passion. One of those things where I can start working on a small feature and 12 hours goes by in the blink of an eye. Game development, for me, is an instant flow state activity.
Other Stuff
I am a Level 2 & 3 qualified NASM Gym Instructor and Personal Trainer. I have a YouTube channel focused on horror game Dead By Daylight that has 37,000 subscribers and over 13 million views. I play keyboards in a progressive rock band. I used to run many Garry's Mod servers.
💿 Favourite album: Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt 2, Scenes from a Memory
🎬 Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption (basic answer, sorry)
📚 Favourite book: The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
⚽️ Favourite sport: Football (obviously)
🏋️ Favourite lift: Deadlift (love/hate relationship)